On the New Year, I got the sad message that my British colleague and wildlife artist friend Timothy John Greenwood had died. His image production for several decades consisted mainly of bird motifs. For me the contact with Timothy was of great significance in previous years, and he played a crucial role in my choice of career.
We met each other in the Doñana National Park in southern Spain in June 1971, where I worked one year as an observer and ringer at the biological station in Seville. It was fun to get to know this remarkable wildlife artist. After Tim – as he often called himself – and his assistant Alec Jenkins had spent a few months in Morocco, including studies of Eleonora´s Falcons, they came back to Doñana in late August. I was going home to military service in Norway in late September, and was invited northwards in Tim’s land rover. We stopped for a week in the Pyrenees, where we had the opportunity to study i.a. Lammergeiers, Bonelli´s Eagles, Golden Eagles, Wallcreepers, Alpine Accentors and Citril Finches. Tim and Alec told that they had spent some days in the Pyrenees on their way south. They had been invited into a monastery. Here was a great swimming pool. Tim described a morning time there as the ultimate condition of life. During the stay in the refreshing and clear water Lammergeiers circled above them – while there was malt whiskey in the glasses and accompaniment by the music of Jimmy Hendrix Experience! After arriving in England with visits to i.a. Wildfowl Trust in Slimbridge in Gloucestershire and a few days stay in Kent, where Tim lived with his adoptive parents, he drove me all the way to Newcastle – and even paid my boat ticket to Oslo. Tim was always a generous person.
In 1972, Tim came over to Norway twice. The first time was in the summer. Then we visited different bird areas in the souteastern part, including Presterødkilen and Ilene in Tønsberg and Kurefjorden in Østfold. Tim photographed Little Tern at Ilene and Ruffs in Kurefjorden. During this visit he became acquainted with several Norwegian bird people, including Eivind Sørnes, Bjorn R. Eriksen and Tor Lindberg from Moss – the latter also in connection with wildlife art. Then the Englishman headed for Finnmark with Morten Brandt from Oslo. Tim was back in Norway at the end of the year. He then celebrated Christmas together with i.a. my family in Åmot in Østerdalen. When I on 4 January 1973 moved from Jeløy to Maridalen it was Tim who drove the removal load. In the years that followed, I worked in the Zoological Museum at Tøyen. While I spent the days in Oslo Tim sat in the little cabin on Granhaug in Maridalen and painted watercolors of Gyr Falcon and Pygmy Owl. Outside, he could study Grey-headed Woodpeckers on the feeding site. On weekends, we had nice trips on the Dausjøen ice and through Hauermarka, which was a fairy-tale forest at that time. And we went with rucksacks up through the valley to the small store Rugda (“The Woodcock”) to buy food and drink. It was during this visit to Norway I was so inspired by Tim’s production of wildlife art that I decided to realize an artistic education instead of the planned biology studies at Oslo University.
Tim turned up again in Maridalen in June 1973. Then he came on a quick visit with his old fellow student at Bromley Technical High School (later Ravensbourne College of Art in Bromley) – Brian Grimwood. He is currently one of Britain’s brightest illustrators. One of their fellow students at Bromley was David Bowie. From mid-July 1973 Tim led a month’s trip from England to Greece. His friend Philip Wardle, Morten Brandt and I were invited on this expedition. It was an incredibly exciting journey with the experience of paintings by Bruno Liljefors and other important wildlife artists in Enschede in the Netherlands – and Great Bustards, Red-footed Falcons and other steppe related species in the Neusiedler See area in Austria. The goal was raptors, pelicans and other wetland species in northeast Greece. In Macedonia, we were arrested while photographing Woodlarks in a military area. Thanks Morten Brandt´s useful knowledge of German, we were set free after a few hours.
Later in the 1970s I visited England on several occasions, and this enabled new gatherings and excursions with Tim. In late autumn in 1975 I spent several weeks in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. I then used a period to study the bird skin collections at the British Museum in Tring. Under this England stay, I spent some days in November along with Tim, including the Wildfowl Trust in Slimbridge. He also brought me to his friends Major Iain Grahame and his wife Didy at Daws Hall Lamarsh Bures, Suffolk. Earlier this year, Tim and Iain had been central persons in the establishment of World Pheasant Association. During the visit to Daws Hall, I was enlisted as the first Norwegian member! At this time, Iain had a large collection of different pheasant species, and it was interesting to study these birds on this magnificent property. Today this is an environmental center and nature reserve. Tim lived at that time for long periods on Daws Hall, and he had a separate room where he worked with his wildlife art. One of the tasks was to illustrate Iain’s book Ruffled feathers. As we sat by the fireplace in the evening Iain told about a special event that had taken place earlier this year. He had – including the initiative of Queen Elizabeth II – been sent to Uganda to get the doomed British teacher Denis Hills out of the captivity of Idi Amin. Iain had previously been Amin’s company commander, and together with Lieutenant General Chandos Blair they managed to persuade the Ugandan president to abolish the death sentence and set free the teacher.
In the spring of 1978, my English colleague once again to Norway. Then he had brought his 61 years old friend Len Baron. They were eventually heading for Finnmark, and had the land rover fully loaded with meat of deer, pheasant, rabbit and other meat provisions. How they got through customs control in Kristiansand with so much meat in the car is a fantastic story I give priority to narrate oral! In England, they had sent 50 bottles Glennfiddich to themselves at different Poste Restante addresses up through Norway and Sweden. Not a single bottle arrived – of course! We were some wonderful days in Maridalen and elsewhere in the Oslo area with close friends before they headed north. Tim was always full of bizarre humor, and enjoyed both good stories, fresh jokes and quirky rules. He had read a lot of archaeology and another history, and could entertain any company with accounts of Britain’s wars around the world. In the 1980s, I met him in England, the Shetlands and Norway. In 1981 we were once again together in the wildfowl park of Sir Peter Scott in Slimbridge, and Tim then met a group including Gunnar Lid, representatives from the environmental authorities and several parliament politicians who had traveled over to study how the British washed oiled seabirds. In the summer of 1986, Roar Solheim and I took place on a journalist trip to Shetland, and then Tim and Len showed up – and invited us for the best Scottish scenery and culture can offer. The two had moved to their own place in Scotland. It had become too crowded for the two in Southern England! Tim’s last visit to Norway was in the autumn of 1987. Then he joined on a whale safari to the Lofoten Islands. It was the last time I saw Tim.
After the stay at Bromley Technical High School Tim’s studies took place at Camberwell School of Art in London. Already in 1968 he was a full time wildlife artist. Then he was 21 years. Shortly after Tim became a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists. He illustrated several books, and his works were exhibited in several galleries at home and abroad. In London, Tim’s original artwork was exhibited in the summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy in Burlington House as well as in the Furneaux Gallery and the Tryon Gallery. Among the one-man exhibitions was one in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985. He mastered both watercolor and oil techniques, but as an artist, he was first and foremost an excellent graphic artist. In particular, he was proficient with the copper etchings. Many of his field trips were to North America and Africa, but mainly to several countries in Asia where he concentrated on pheasants. When Tim in 1975 was engaged with the establishment of the World Pheasant Association, it was he that designed the logo for this association. His great interest in these birds followed all his life. The highlight of this engagement was his illustrations of 48 pheasant species to Keith Howman´s two-volume Atlas of Rare pheasant.
The contact with Tim through the 1990s and the following decade took place via letters and telephone. But Tim’s life was unfortunately characterized more and more of his relationship to alcohol. That is a bad feature when you are an artist. In particular serious was the loss of his driving licence three times during those two decades – and in a total of 18 years. This limited his ability to carry out study and work trips. When I spoke with him two years ago he had got back his driving licence, and he had hopes of being able to buy a new land rover and come over to Norway again. However, the last years of his life in Scotland was marked by declining health due to the drug problems, and his circle of friends was getting smaller. In many ways, he fell out of the society. When his only local friend came to visit him on Christmas Eve last year Tim was found frozen to death in the kitchen with his dog Magic resting on top. It had been 20 degrees below zero at night, and Tim had not ensured supply of heating oil in the oven. So tragic a human life can eventually be. Farewell with Tim was going on in silence with a priest and a handful of his closest friends present. Among them was Keith Howman in the World Pheasant Association, which had supported Tim in different ways for many years. In March, Tim’s ashes were scattered in the lake near his home in the stunning countryside near Pitlochry.
Tim died shortly after his birthday on 11 December, and was consequently 63 years old. He leaves first and foremost a great production of wildlife art. But Tim’s distinctive appearance, natural joy and generosity will be remembered by those who met him through life. Peace upon his memory.